DRK-12 Research and Products

Publication | In this work, we extend variational auto encoders (VAE) to estimate item parameters and correlated latent abilities, and directly compare the ML2P-VAE method to more traditional parameter estimation methods, such as Monte Carlo expectation-…
Publication | Drawing from published literature, as well as the experiences of a co-design team of motivation and science education researchers and middle school science teachers, we address the landscape of decision points for designing and implementing…
Publication | Professional development that privileges teachers’ voice, equity, and the investigation of high-quality instruction is essential to the mathematics education community. However, more research is needed to understand the process, content, and…
Publication | This study explores design strategies used by experienced designers in Energy3D, a computer-aided design (CAD) simulation environment designed for learning settings, to provide insight into supporting students' use of CAD simulation environments…
Product for Educators | The Fraction Activities and Assessments for Conceptual Teaching (FAACT) instructional program is designed to support teachers’ insights into students’ conceptual understandings of fractions. The overall program goal is to…
Publication | This blog post looks at the role of simulations in teacher learning.
Publication | The ReLaTe-SA project investigates the research question: what language do teachers use to describe and explain routines in algebra classes? The goal of this article is to inform readers about some ways we have learned to describe the discourse…
Publication | This study contributes to the growing body of research that highlights the usefulness of professional noticing of children’s mathematical thinking for understanding the complexity and variability in teaching expertise. We explored the noticing…
Publication | Examining teachers’ knowledge on a large scale involves addressing substantial measurement and logistical issues; thus, existing teacher knowledge assessments have mainly consisted of selected-response items because of their ease of scoring.…
Publication | This review synthesized insights from 25 NSF DRK-12 projects that studied prekindergarten (PreK) and elementary science teaching. This review covered 25 of the 27 projects funded between 2011 and 2015. We synthesized the empirical findings from…
Publication | This article presents a vision for 2025 to implement low cost and effective extended reality (XR) technologies to supplement teacher education field experiences, regardless of if and when another global or local crisis occurs (e.g., pandemic,…
Publication | The give-n task is widely used in developmental psychology to indicate young children’s knowledge or use of the cardinality principle (CP): the last number word used in the counting process indicates the total number of items in a collection.…
Publication | Concord Consortium’s new Earth Rocks Map displays a generalized representation of Earth’s geology, focused primarily on the distribution of the three major rock types (igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary). What makes this map different is that…
Publication | The ability for an educational game designer to understand their audience's play styles and resulting experience is an essential tool for improving their game's design. In this paper we present a simple, reusable process using best practices for…
Publication | In this chapter, we argue that the learning sciences and science education have coevolved, a co-evolution that began with the emergence of the learning sciences in the 1990s and that continues today.
Publication | Problem solving is a central focus of mathematics teaching and learning. If teachers are expected to support students' problem-solving development, then it reasons that teachers should also be able to solve problems aligned to grade level…
Publication | The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of different data conditions on item parameter recovery and classification accuracy of three dichotomous mixture item response theory (IRT) models: the Mix1PL, Mix2PL, and Mix3PL.
Publication | Women and ethnic minoritized individuals are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domains in postsecondary education and in the workforce. The aim of the current study was to examine whether adolescents'…
Publication | Immersive 360 videos are increasingly being used in pre-service teachers (PST) education. There is preliminary evidence that this technology may benefit future educators’ focus and attention to classroom settings and events. However, more…
Publication | While tragedy has struck an inordinate number of students in the past several years, not all areas of the country are at risk for every natural hazard all the time. To avoid having students feel like Chicken Little under a falling sky, the…
Publication | The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have been imperative for informing many facets of the chemistry education research field, one of which includes the professional development (PD) of high school teachers. While many researchers and…
Publication | Researchers have typically identified and characterized teachers’ knowledge bases (e.g., pedagogical content knowledge and subject matter knowledge) in an effort to improve enacted instructional strategies. As shown by the Refined Consensus…
Publication | In super-diverse classroom contexts, students come from varied migration channels, immigration statuses, languages, countries of origin, and religions, which contribute to new and complex social configurations of the classroom. Super-diversity…
Publication | In this paper we use an existing history learning game with an active audience as a research platform for exploring how humor and "snarkiness" in the dialog script affect students' progression and attitudes about the game.
Publication | Professional noticing is an essential skill for teachers that is enacted by teachers via their embodied senses (sight, sound, etc.). To better understand the nature of teacher noticing, 44 preservice teachers (PSTs) viewed a 360 video of an…